Creating Creative Organizations

Enhancing Employee Creativity

© Victor E. Sower, Ph.D., C.Q.E.

How do I evaluate employee creativity?

How do I ensure that I havecreative people on my teams?

Creativity Exercise

Fluency

The ability to generate many ideas easily

Flexibility

The ability to come up with many different types of ideas

Creativity GridF

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Creativity GridF

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VeryCreative

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Flexiblebut notFluent

Fluentbut notFlexible

“Measures of ideological fluency andflexibility apparently do not relate

reliably to real-world creativeachievement within a discipline.”

David Perkins, 1988

An organization is creative when itsemployees do something new and

potentially useful without being directlyshown or taught.

The results of creativity in organizations are improvements and innovations.

Six Elements of Organization Creativity

• Alignment

• Self-Initiated Activity

• Unofficial Activity

• Serendipity

• Diverse Stimuli

• Within-Organization Communication

Source: Robinson & Stern, Corporate Creativity

Alignment

• The degree to which the interests and actions of each employee support the organization’s goals.

• Lack of alignment is one of the main reasons for lack of creativity in an organization.

• Alignment is both intangible and hard to achieve.

Ways to Promote Alignment

• Clarity about what the key goals of the organization are.

• Commitment to initiatives that promote key goals.

• Accountability for actions that affect key goals.

Self-Initiated Activity

• Unexpected creative acts will result only from self-initiated activity.

• The desire to initiate creative acts not only already exists within most people, but is derived from an urge as deep rooted as hunger.

• Action is needed by organizations to promote self-initiated creativity.

Effective Ways to Respond to Employee Ideas

• Include everyone.

• Make the process easy to use.

• Have strong follow-through.

• Document ideas.

• Base system on intrinsic motivation.

Unofficial Activity

• Work done without direct official support can make it possible for an organization to improve in ways it never expected.

• A period of unofficial status can bring some important benefits that are often lost with official status.

Serendipity

The faculty of making happy andunexpected discoveries by accident.

Sagacity

Serendipity

The faculty of making happy andunexpected discoveries by accident.

Gifted with acuteness of mental discernment;having special aptitude for the discovery of

the truth; devising the means for theaccomplishment of goals.

Ways to Promote Serendipity

• Increase awareness of the accidents that occur.

• Increase the organization’s domain of sagacity to turn more accidents into fortunate ones.

Diverse Stimuli

• A stimulus can either push someone in a completely new direction or give that person fresh insight into what he or she has already set out to do.

• The majority of stimuli that lead to organization creativity arise in connection with the work itself.

Ways to Promote Diverse Stimuli

• Identify stimuli and provide them to employees.• Rotate employees into every job they are capable

of doing.• Arrange for employees to interact with those

inside and outside the organization who are likely to be the source of stimuli.

• Create opportunities for employees to bring into the organization stimuli they get on their own.

Within-Organization Communication

• The majority of creative acts in organizations bring together components from unexpected places.

• If communication occurs only through official channels, the employees who know about these components but who do not ordinarily communicate with each other will never interact.

Ways to Promote Within-Organization Communication

• Provide opportunities for employees who do not normally interact with each other to meet.

• Ensure that every employee has a sufficient understanding of the organization’s activities to be able to tap its resources and expertise.

• Create a new organization priority: all employees should know the importance of being responsive to requests for information or help from other employees.

Six Elements of Organization Creativity

• Alignment

• Self-Initiated Activity

• Unofficial Activity

• Serendipity

• Diverse Stimuli

• Within-Organization Communication

Source: Robinson & Stern, Corporate Creativity

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